Virgin Galactic prepares for its first commercial spaceflight

Commercial space travel has been around since the Jetsons, but today Virgin Galactic presented the model of what they hope will be the first spaceship to take commercial passengers on a two-hour space flight. SpaceShipTwo is the polished, commercial version of SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize back in 2004.

Iím more than certain that when the Ansari X Prize was announced back in í96 no one thought that a non-governmental organization could accomplish such a feat. It did take them over 10 years but here we are, just months away from the first commercial spaceflight. Two hundred wanna-be astronauts have already paid in excess of $200,000 to be on that first flight, and 80 of them have been through medical assessment and centrifuge training.